


Scarred and Scarlet Hearts

by Cartonsofcartoons



Category: Korean Drama, Moon Lovers: Scarlet Heart Ryeo｜달의 연인-보보경심 려
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-06
Updated: 2016-09-21
Packaged: 2018-08-13 10:17:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7973260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cartonsofcartoons/pseuds/Cartonsofcartoons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She remembers bursting out of the water, gasping for breath. She had thought initially that she was alive, her lungs were burning up in pain and that felt like something that didn’t happen when someone died. Then there were all those men in various states of dishabille looking at her and the same girl as right now calling out to her and getting her out of there. All seemed like something very real. Until she got out of there following the girl (more like being dragged by her) and saw all the people in the old fashioned clothes and realised she was dead and fainted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've been watching and really enjoying Scarlet Hearts. Lee Jun-Ki is hot, IU is cute and Kang Haneul is da bomb. This is pretty much nothing but the head-canon I've built for Ha-Jin/ Hae-Soo adding a bit more context to her character. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy and please leave a comment!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ep 1

 

 

“Oh right, I died.” She says out loud to the girl and the other pretty lady who look at her strangely.

 

She remembers bursting out of the water, gasping for breath. She had thought initially that she was alive, her lungs were burning up in pain and that felt like something that didn’t happen when someone died. Then there were all those men in various states of dishabille looking at her and the same girl as right now calling out to her and getting her out of there. All seemed like something very real. Until she got out of there following the girl (more like being dragged by her) and saw all the people in the old fashioned clothes and realised she was dead and fainted.

 

No, not fainted. Can’t faint if you’re dead right? Less embarrassing too. Better dead than fainting all over the place.

 

The place, which had to be the afterlife. She didn’t have a very good imagination after all. Couldn’t have imagined all the beautiful and half-naked people and couldn’t recall them from memory either. The bastard ex hadn’t been particularly fit, after all, and those abs were a bit less airbrushed than the chocolate ones in the magazines. She could see a few freckles on one of them at least, Princes, they had claimed.

 

Afterlife, she decides, is funny.

 

“You didn’t die, you almost died!” The girl said cheerfully. Way too cheerfully.

 

Wait, what? Only almost died?

 

She’s alive?

 

“I’m not dead?” She pinches herself. It hurts. Like the lungs were hurting before. Not dead.

 

She runs out. All these people in the same old fashioned clothing. Bowing to her.

 

(It’s the bowing to her bit that is the weirdest she decides. Usually she’s overlooked or just plain dismissed rudely. She _does_ work in customer service at a mall after all. Or rather, _used to_.)

 

She’s ‘Hae-Soo’, the pretty lady tells her when she asks, desperate.  The pretty lady, her cousin as she finds out, is also glad to hear that she recognises Goryeo. ‘Hae-soo’ wonders how to tell her she remembers it vaguely from history books not from life.

 

Certainly not her life as Ha-Jin doormat extraordinaire. But it is ‘Hae-Soo’s life. In the time of the founding of Goryeo.

 

Damn.

 

Well, at least she’s a lady.

 

* * *

 

Though she may very well be a not nice one. The girl, Chae-ryung as she finds out, tells her about herself. She seems to leave out a lot though. Besides, people keep secrets, she would know. So, maybe ‘Hae-Soo’ isn’t a paragon of virtues after all.

 

Well at least she has nice skin.

 

And she’s living with nice people. The man who’d comforted her the night before was nice. Her cousin’s husband apparently. And a prince too. One of the half-naked people she’d stumbled upon, then? Ah, but married.

 

And a rather doting husband too. Her cousin, she decides is lucky and so is ‘Hae-Soo’ to have such a nice cousin.

 

“This is disrespectful.” A woman says, surprising Soo. She’s the Princess Chae-ryung says and bows, nudging her to bow as well. The Princess smiles but it isn’t a nice smile. Doesn’t reach her eyes which look dead. “Leave her be, I heard she lost her memory. However it seems she lost her manners too. What shall we do? I suppose it would not hurt for you to learn from the very beginning.”

 

The smile is still on her face. It is still fake. Soo knows the type. The kind of girls who’ll have their makeup done, demanding things to be done like this and that and then deciding not to buy anything because it wasn’t luxurious enough.

 

Bitches.

 

“-You should not be looking at what a married couple is doing. I will deal with it harshly if it happens again even if you are her cousin. Do you understand?” She says smiling as if talking a slow person.

 

Bitch. Well, Soo isn’t at the mall right now. She is not required to take this anymore.

 

“If you don’t like me just say so.” Soo smiles. Her smile is fake too. But she isn’t hiding it behind pretty words.

 

Finally some emotion reaches the Princess’ eyes, even if it is just surprise. Really, picking on someone with amnesia to make herself feel better? Sad little bully. Soo hasn’t lived through middle school for nothing. She knows how to deal with bullies. Oh, they may beat her up but they got angry when she didn’t stay down. And Soo could live off the satisfaction from that.

 

Even if Chae-ryung evidently can’t. Making excuses for her, making her sound as if she’s crazy.

 

Which Hae-soo isn’t happy about. If she’s going to live in this time with these people then they should know exactly what she thinks and what she will do.

 

“What’s this commotion?”

 

“Brother.” The Princess says. Right, she’s forgotten. The cousin’s hubby is a prince and thus, stuck up princess’ brother. She might be in trouble.

 

* * *

 

She is in trouble

 

Her cousin’s hubby is suspicious. She isn’t making it easier for herself by gaping at all these places ‘Hae-soo’ is supposedly familiar with.

 

“Did you spy on the princes bathing before or after you lost your memory?” He asks.

 

That isn’t the question she is expecting. Surely, girls perving on pretty princes isn’t that much of a surprise that he has to ask after it?

 

“I don’t really remember.”

 

Although that is something to consider. ‘Hae-Soo’ was peeping in on the princes. Why?

 

Her cousin’s husband starts asking about what she is to do and she doesn’t quite understand that. Is he asking after her ambitions? Her goals in life? What goals in life were the ladies allowed in the Goryeo period, Soo wonders. She imagines it is limited to babies and marriage but doesn’t quite know. She’s no historian. And the Sageuks she’s watched in the past were set in different time periods and usually had cross dressing women. That might have been easier, she thinks but shakes herself out of it. The prince is still talking

 

“-I’ll help you set up a new place.”

 

Ah, he’s talking about what she’ll do with her injury.

 

“I’m the one who got hurt, why would you take care of me?” Soo wonders. Her boyfriend (ex, she reminds herself) screwed her over and he actually had a reason to be invested in her life. Why was this stranger talking of helping her then?

 

Oh right, he wasn’t a stranger. He was her cousin’s husband. And a prince. It might look bad if his wife’s cousin was screwed over because of an injury.

 

Still, a handout is a handout. And she however he phrases it, it is still a handout that he’s offering. It’s not in her nature to get handouts, or accept it.

 

She tries to tell him this. And then realises that handouts, the word, doesn’t exist yet.

 

Right, Goryeo and all that. Probably means she will never be independent either.

 

On the other hand, no debt collectors, right?

 

She tries to convince him about her usefulness though. Tries, being the word. He plays hide and seek in the room and she doesn’t know it well enough to do some good seeking.

 

Only suddenly he’s a lot closer than he was. Probably more than is appropriate too.

 

That’s not how you play hide and seek, she wasn’t to tell him but he’s looking at her with an intensity that she is not familiar with.

 

“You...seem like a different person.” He says and the panic begins to set in. She’s been lulled into complacency by his questions about the bath. But he’s asking about her now, maybe wondering if she’s an imposter? This isn’t good. “It doesn’t matter to me.”

 

The panic crashes. Her heart is racing, between his proximity and the fear of being caught she is nearly trembling in wonderment.

 

And he turns the question back to spying on the princes. And bring sit back to his wife.

 

She mustn’t make her cousin worry. That is his caveat and Soo gets it then. She remembers her cousin, how she struggled with breathing, how she coughed. She must be very sick and she was supposed to nurse her. Instead she’s gone and injured herself and worried her .

 

“I’ll work very hard from now .” She says and scurries off.

 

Safe!

 

* * *

 

Lantern making. It is not a skill Soo possesses. Maybe ‘Hae-Soo’ did but she doesn’t. And the Princess Bitch is still there in all her passive aggressive glory. Still refuses to admit that she dislikes Soo. Maybe if she talked it out, she wouldn’t be so constipated all the time.

 

But she has higher rank, Soo remembers . And she said she would work hard. So when the Princess tells her to rest, it isn’t an acceptable course of action.

 

She goes to make the glue.

 

It isn’t what she expects.

 

It is exhausting.

 

Now she knows why Chae-ryung looked at her like that. Like she was an idiot. She was an idiot for ever thinking Princess Bitch would ever be anything other than bitchy.

 

She’s stretching to shake the kinks out of her muscles when she realises that there’s a reason why someone needed to stir the glue constantly. Which she isn’t doing and thus might ruin the glue she realises and is back at stirring.

 

Her cousin’s husband is here. Throwing her words back at her. He’s kind and tells her she’s learning and is amazing.

 

Through laughter. Barely contained laughter.

 

Amazing. Yeah, right.

 

But she perseveres. She does it after all even if she’s broken her muscles doing it. Her arms are limp noodles and her feet are numbed blocks. But she’s done.

 

Which is when she sees him.

 

He’s wearing the old fashioned clothes, distinctly better groomed and walks with a sense of importance. But it’s him, the hobo from the pier.

 

And Soo remembers. That she isn’t Soo at all. She’s Ha-Jin. She’s forgotten that in everything. Trying to be someone else because she was in this stranger’s body, trying to fit in. She’s forgotten that she didn’t fit in after all. She will never fit in

 

She isn’t Hae-Soo. She is _Ha-Jin_.

 

She runs. Follows him, chases him out wherever he is going. She can’t see him but he must be there, he was just there!

 

And then it sounds from behind her. The neigh of a horse, the clip clop of its hooves that she hadn’t heard over the sound of her heartbeat in her ears, looking for the man. There’s a ravine on the other side, something she only realises when she is almost in it. Almost back to drowning again.

 

Would she return home, she wonders as she teeters on the edge. Until suddenly she isn’t teetering. She’s pressed against something hard, upon the horse that she had feared would run her down.

 

The something hard is the horse’s rider, she realises and it is the second last thought she has for some time as the shock sets in.

 

The last thought is the fervent hope that she doesn’t faint again.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ep 5

 

Her cousin asks her what feelings she has for her husband. 

 

Feelings. As if feelings mattered. She had  _ loved  _ a man once and he had left her in ruins. Left her  a hollow shell of a person. As if feelings could ever matter in the face of respect. 

 

And Prince Wook respects her cousin  _ so  _ much. Soo doesn’t know much about the Goryeo time but she knows about people. She knows how easy it would be for him to marry someone else, hide her cousin away as a sickly woman who needed peace and quiet. No one would have batted an eye at that but he is still here. Still looking after her cousin. Still the one she can lean on.

 

But feelings matter so much to her cousin. She loves her husband so very much. He doesn’t love her the same way perhaps but he does love her. And Soo can’t understand how anyone possible couldn’t love her, she is so very kind and nice and gentle.

 

And she asks Soo to do her makeup. Make her pretty one last time so he remembers her as beautiful.

 

One last time.

 

Soo supposes that she hadn’t quite grasped the fact that her cousin was  _ dying _ . Not just sickly and in pain but dying.

 

Dying _ right now _ if her words are anything to go by. 

 

One last time. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This episode...I will need time to recover from it. I am deep in mourning right now.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> EP 7

The mask came off slowly, very slowly.

 

Soo was curious. She hadn’t been lying when she’d told him she hadn’t seen his face in the bath. That was mostly because she’d been a bit distracted, what with almost drowning herself to see if she could go back home and then having all that tan expanse of skin in front of her. Her attention at the time had been a fair few inches south of his face. The main thing he remembered from seeing him in the bath was that he must have worked out and dieted a ton.

 

So yes, she was fairly curious to see what was under the mask although she was also not happy to be seeing it like this. It should be his choice, not the whim of a child. A child she’d been indulging too much, she thought.

 

The mask was finally off. All around her Soo heard gasps and sharp intakes of breath as So’s family was clearly horrified at his scar.

 

Soo just stared.

 

And stared some more.

 

...That was it? That little straight scar was all that was horrifying them so much? She was expecting proper Phantom fo the Opera kind of stuff, burns, mottled skin or maybe pus oozing out of stuff. This was an old scar, almost faded. Honestly, it was Harry Potter kind of scar.

 

What was all the fuss about? Were they looking at the same thing? Was there some hidden x-ray vision that people who actually belonged to the Goryeo period had or something?

 

He fled the scene and the rest didn’t even stop him. Soo followed him though, intent on getting him back there. That scar was nothing, all the fuss was for nothing, but it clearly meant something to him. And she couldn’t very well make Eun apologise for his behaviour if So wasn’t there, could she?

 

Only So is angry. Not just at the world but at her and he pushes her around a bit more than she would like. It’s still nothing when compared to the legit sword drawing and chokehold kind of stuff he’d done in the beginning but it still isn’t fun. Especially since she thought they were friends and he was past the homicidal behaviour now.

 

“Look at me,” He growls down at her, “Look at me properly! That look… that look in your eyes… I hate it so much that it makes me crazy.”

 

They stare at each other for a while but then Soo has had enough of this all. Her hand comes up and she slaps him, albeit very very lightly, across his face. He stares at her like she is crazy and to be honest seeing as how she has slapped the fucking prince across his face, the same prince who tried to kill her before, she can understand it.

 

But she has been pushed around enough, had her life decided for her enough and she wants to retaliate.

 

“What look are you talking about you idiot?!” She says, all but screeching, all the shit that’s happened in the last few days crashing down upon her and she doesn’t want to carry it around with her anymore.

 

She almost got married. To King Taejo! While still reeling from her cousin’s death and the completely improper flirtation she had with Wook! And she only got out of it through cutting herself!

 

What has her life come to?

 

“So you have a little scar, stop acting like it’s the end of the world! I can see that you could have actually lost your vision or even your eye, hell you could have died. Instead of being thankful for what you have you’re making a fuss about that little thing?!” Her hand flies up of its own accord waving in the general direction of the puny pathetic scar that he felt the overwhelming urge to hide.

 

Okay, there’s probably things she doesn’t understand about this era, about how he got the scar, about everything. But she’s seen a man milling about in the markets who had a false leg, hell even the man who’d kidnaped Jung didn’t have his right arm and he still had enough potency to think about getting revenge.

 

“...You slapped me,” He says, incredulous but not angry anymore,which is strange but then he’s strange so she shouldn’t be surprised.

 

“If you have a problem, change things and move on! You want to get angry, fine, but get angry for proper reasons and at people who deserve not just the first person you see!”

 

Soo stomped off but turned around to face him one last time, waving an angry finger in his face.

 

“And when you calm down you better tell me exactly what you mean by that look in my eyes, I’m not a mind reader, I don’t know what you mean by that!”

 

With that Soo left, hoping that the Lady Oh had some work for her to do. Grinding herbs for poultices would make a good outlet right about now.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (This may have devolved into crack)


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ep 9

 

She wishes she wasn’t a court lady. She wishes she was back in Wook’s palace. It drives her mad, all the politics and the games, all the marriages that happened so suddenly but mostly she just misses the prayer stones. The pile of stones had become her place of worship, her anchor, her everything. She wishes she was there right now so maybe she could talk to Lady Hae, maybe she could talk to her mother. They wouldn’t answer back but it was the only place she had ever felt truly safe and she wanted it back.

 

This world was changing. Or perhaps it was just her who was changing.

 

Her visions were driving her  _ insane _ .

 

It is easy enough to think of So killing those assassins as a necessity. It is easy enough having feelings for Wook knowing they would never go anywhere.

 

Now she thought of So killing his brothers and it killed a bit of her with it. She thought of Wook and his promises to wait and it made her flutter and it tore at her. She was becoming more and more of Hae-Soo with every passing day and losing Ha-Jin.

 

For a moment she pushes it all out of her mind. She thinks of being at the park in happier days, with her family a long time ago. They’d taken the boats out onto the lake and her mother had shrieked when a fish had flopped out of the water and onto the boat. It had almost capsized and they’d almost fallen in.

 

Is the real Hae-Soo there in the future in Ha-Jin’s body? Maybe they preferred the new Ha-Jin then. Maybe the new Ha-Jin was better at reading people. Maybe she would make plans to deal with the debt collectors. Maybe she would sneer at the old Ha-Jin who’d been taken in so easily. 

 

Ha-Jin had wanted to sleep for a thousand years and never wake up. Hae-Soo had emerged out of the waters alive. 

 

Which one was she to be now?

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this episode was weird. I wish they'd explore Soo's emotions a bit more, it'd be nice to hear more of what she feels outside of the love triangle they're in. All the other characters have so many nuances and depth but beyond Soo's hero complex we just don't get to see much of her. I'd appreciate flashbacks to her life in the 21st Century so I'd know more about who she actually is, at the moment she's so weakly written it's like she's not the lead.


End file.
